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Overview
After a traveler kills the ogress that devoured his brother, he cuts her belly open and draws out the dead young man. Washing the body does not revive it. As he sits grieving with his cheek in his hand, two animals called tarentes in Basset’s French translation appear. They first play, then fight, and one strikes and kills its sister. The human witness reproaches the survivor for harming itself and its sister and tells it to weep.
The survivor answers that the man may have reason to cry, but he will see its sister return with it. It fetches an herb and places it at the dead animal’s nose; as soon as she smells it, she rises and runs. The traveler observes the herb, takes it and puts it beneath his own brother’s nose. His brother rises and returns to life, the final narrated event. The herb is not identified by a botanical name. In his separate comparative note Basset questions another translator’s animal word, tarentule, against tarente; that editorial question does not turn the main episode into a spider account.
Origins & earliest records
René Basset, Nouveaux contes berbères (1897), no. 104, L’ogresse et les deux frères, complete pp. 103–107. Preface iv identifies Mohammed Abdi as communicating this Beni Menacer text at Cherchel in June 1887. Note 192, p. 304, cites an earlier text and transcription in Textes en dialecte des Beni Menacer, p. 14 onward; that edition is a lead rather than an independently inspected text.
Records & interpretation
Complete French narrative inspected against original pages 142–146, printed pp. 103–107; preface iv and source note 192 checked in original images. The first brother’s earlier killing is reported retrospectively, while the second encounter is narrated. Comparative Zouaoua serpent and marriage episodes on pp. 304–305 remain separate.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Nouveaux contes berbères
No. 104, complete pp. 103–107; preface iv; note 192, p. 304. Comparative note 193, pp. 304–305, distinguishes the expanded Zouaoua account.
Family, evolution & connections
Two tarente sisters — Basset’s Beni Menacer account
No.104, L’ogresse et les deux frères, complete narrative pp.103–107; sister episode pp.106–107.
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- Two unnamed tarente sisters (sibling group, not a parent)
- Her killed and restored sister
The French narrator and surviving tarente both explicitly identify the other as her sister. The two sisters have no personal names, named parents or birth order. They are separate from the human paternal half-brothers. The ogress’s son address is not biological parentage. No modern taxonomic species identification is imposed on the source word tarente.
The tarente’s unnamed sister
The French telling explicitly identifies the second tarente as the first one’s sister. After killing her during a fight, the survivor revives her with an herb placed at her nose; the human observer copies this to revive his own brother. No animal parents or personal names are supplied.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary collected narrative; original facsimiles inspectedOriginal edition, complete Beni Menacer ogress and animal-revival episodeResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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